Troy students working on documentary

Jason Ji, 16, left, and Frank Boudon, 16, in the TV studio at Troy High School. The two students are making a documentary on an old but famous case over students wearing armbands in school to protest. Thursday, February 13, 2014. Tim Thompson-The Oakland Press

Jason Ji, 16, left, and Frank Boudon, 16, in the TV studio at Troy High School. The two students are making a documentary on an old but famouse case on student protest over wearing armbands in school. Thursday, February 13, 2014. Tim Thompson-The Oakland Press

Two Troy High School juniors are making a documentary about students’ rights based, in part, on their research into a 1969 case involving teens wearing black armbands in school to protest the Vietnam War.

As part of their research, fledgling filmmakers Jason Ji and Frank Boudon interviewed Robert Sedler, Wayne State University Distinguished Professor of Law, about the precedent-setting Supreme Court case.

Ji and Boudon chose the Tinker vs. Des Moines Independent Community School District case as the topic of their film to enter in the annual National History Day Inc. The case defined the constitutional rights to free speech of public school students and is still used by courts today, according to Tom Reynolds, spokesman for Wayne State.

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In addition to answering students’ questions about Tinker and its relevance today, Sedler told the teens about a local federal case he litigated in 1999 for the American Civil Liberties Union, in which he successfully defended the right of a Lincoln Park High School student to wear a pentacle as a symbol of her Wiccan religion. School officials had banned the pentacle, lumping it in with gang symbols. The precedent set by Tinker played a role in the 1999 case, Sedler said.

“We got some really good stuff,” Jason said.

And Frank noted, “We have two other interviews,” to conduct before the project can be completed.

This is the duo’s second documentary. The first, completed last year, was titled, “Poverty: America’s Untold Crisis.” Boudon also made a documentary on his own this year, titled, “StudentCam 2014: Recapturing the American Dream.“

The two have had no formal training. They studied on their own to learn to do the filmmaking and learned their research skills in advanced placement history class.

They divide their filmmaking roles with Boudon doing the camera work, using equipment at a public television studio, and editing on special software; and Ji writes the scripts and sets up the interviews, constantly revising and incorporating interviews and information gained into the script.

Their idea for their newest documentary “Tinker vs. De Moines: Defending Student Rights” came out of this year’s theme of the National History Day Inc. Competition, which is national rights and responsibilities in history.

In history at Troy High, “We had learned about the Warren Court and so we focused on the 1960s,” said Boudon, referring to the U.S. Supreme Court during the years between 1953 and 1969, under liberal Chief Justice Earl Warren.